Secret Father, A Novel
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Secret Father is a suspenseful drama of family and politics set in Cold War Berlin. Missed signals, cloaked motives, false postures, and panicked responses echo tragically across borders and generations when, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a father and son recount the tense events of nearly thirty years before. In 1961, just before the Wall rises, three teenagers from an American school in West Germany travel to the Communist side of the divided city to join a rally. Unknown to them, their parents have unfinished business reaching back to World War II which will pull the teens into the vortex of an international incident.

New York Times Notable Book of the Year, 2004
The story's setting is political, its pace that of a thriller, but the memories are often personal -- of widowhood, fatherhood, first love, late love and youthful folly.... Where Carroll distances himself from the run-of-the-mill spy novel, however, is in the emotional journey that
accompanies his characters.... The book's epigraph from Dostoyevsky --
"Real love, compared to fantasy, is a harsh and dreadful thing" --   suggests there is no redemption without pain. But the message of "Secret Father" is broader: for nations as for individuals, there can be no imagining the future until the past has been quieted." -- New York Times Book Review

"James Carroll's first novel in nine years takes a thoughtful, balanced look at the father-son conflicts that erupted during the Cold War.... All the fathers in this novel have secrets... The Cold War may have been madness, Carroll tells us, but it was real, world-threatening madness, and the older generation sometimes managed it deftly. Kennedy denounced the Wall in public but covertly let it be built because it removed the likelihood of war over Berlin. The teen rebels' idealism is genuine, but Marcuse and missile-watching aren't appropriate outlets for it. They need to grow up enought to find such outlets -- and Carroll, in this persuasively detailed, psychologically intricate story, assures us that they do." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Splendid.... Secret Father, [Carroll's] 10th novel, shows he is on course, his hand steady, deftly guiding readers through the shadows of Cold War conspiracies and toward enlightenment.... A subtle, dramatically staged political thriller. Set in a a plausible historical context, this is a novel driven by Carroll's vision of the world's looming threats of destruction set agains faint promises of reconciliation.... In this, his best novel, James Carroll dramatizes the dreadful days of Cold War tensions and shows how real love and lasting reconciliation rose from the ashes of Berlin." -- The Boston Sunday Globe

"Engaging political drama.... Secret Father is very good fiction. It's not so much a spy novel as a suspenseful love story that challenges the conventional wisdom about the Cold War, the war that Americans like to think we won.... [Carroll] knows how to weave a story, using Michael and his father as alternating narrators. Better yet, he knows his history and what he calls 'one of the great untold stories of the Cold War': how the Berlin Wall helped preserve the peace.... Much has been written about the Berlin Wall: how it went up, 42 years ago next Wednesday, and how it came down in a 1989 at the hands of the people. Carroll's novel makes that history come alive, as the best historical novels can do." -- USA Today

"Weaving history with political intrigue and the dark and complex pasts of families, Carroll creates a gripping tale of deceit and loyalty, passion and despair, revenge and love. The psychological undercurrents are as charged as the Cold War drama, making this a doubly rewarding read. Powerful political thriller." -- People Magazine

"James Carroll spent part of his adolescence in Germany, and that shows in the emotive details that surround the story of his new book: the beginning of the economic miracle in West Berlin, the devastation and paranoia of East Berlin, and in his careful depiction of the American high school students who set the plot in motion.... [A] story that cunningly evolves in such a way that it makes for a double wallop. It's both a spy thriller that brings the Cold War vividly to life, and a family history.... [Carroll] makes a sturdy and forward-driving narrative line... riding it all the way to its powerful conclusion." -- Alan Cheuse, NPR's All Things Considered

"An uncommonly intelligent espionage story, written with flair and slow but seductive pacing. But 'Secret Father' is also a story of parent-child love, told with quiet wisdom and an undercurrent of deep melancholy." -- Seattle Times

"After nine years of silence as a storyteller, comes what arguably is his finest exploration of human nature -- a novel about fathers and sons, and the burdens of love and letting go. It is both a convoluted period thriller and an uncertain expedition to the deepest, uncharted nature of intimate relationships.... The only other writers who have captured the claustrophobic menace of Berlin during the cold War are John le Carre and Len Deighton. That's fast company, but Carroll definitely belongs in it."
-- New York Daily News

"History is what always infuses Carroll's work and what has given all his books an abiding tincture of wisdom.... And this, not the little tragedies of the players, is why 'Secret Father' is affecting." -- Boston Magazine

"Dignified, refined and politically and psychologically astute.... Carroll enfolds historical details into the personal stories of his characters with great and careful art.... [Carroll] has given readers a cast of characters that truly reflect their time while still coming alive as real, individual people.... As if a gripping plot and intriguing characters weren't enough, 'Secret Father' is also beautifully written. Carroll takes the time to detail what his characters see, think and feel..." -- Rocky Mountain News

"Carroll explores the nuances of the parent-child relationship, revealing how love can amplify misunderstanding but also how family struggles may echo political life.... Carroll draws an interesting psychological portrait of father and son and tells a good old-fashioned spy story... 'Secret Father' holds many secrets, the most revealing of which have nothing to do with plot but with human psychology and world history." -- Chicago Tribune

"James Carroll has made a career of stories in which the grand sweep of history is summarized in the infinite choices of fallible and flawed people, and his first novel in nine years now becomes part of his intensely intricate oeuvre....  And while 'Secret Father' is a story of espionage and love painted across the broad, complex canvas of Soviet-controlled East Berlin, it is a far more powerful -- if stealthy -- story about the relationship between fathers and sons....  Carroll is one of the most adept and versatile writers on the American scene today... His style is graceful and literate, eloquent and thoughtful." -- Denver Post

"'Secret Father' is classic espionage, with various shades of gray, a world of distorted mirrors... The plot is dense with stunning twists of fortune, breakthroughs leading to cul de sacs and all manner of clandestine confusion.The finale is intensely ironic, certainly appropriate for clashes where victory can never be declared.... Carroll skillfully recreates the almost unbearable tension of nuclear standoff, the miscalculations that lead to Cuba and eventually to Vietnam." -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"The tension that filled [Berlin] in the months just before the wall's construction in 1961 is the backdrop of James Carroll's intelligent, atmospheric novel... Carroll's greatest achievement is skillfully weaving historical context into what essentially is a genre yarn. An interesting series of forays into 'one of the great untold stories of the Cold War'.... 'Secret Father' ultimately offers a vivid picture of that flash point." -- Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"The heart of this fine novel, Carroll's first in nine years, is spelled out in the book's epigraph, a line from Dostoyevski: 'Real love, compared to fantasy, is a harsh and dreadful thing.' Carroll writes with rich, lyrical ease... His characters are richly drawn, and the pieces of his impeccably paced story fit together with the cool precision of a Mercedes-Benz. He plays the cards of his plot perfectly, each new element a revelation, leaving the reader hungrily turning the page until the riveting story is told and the lesson is learned, that real love is indeed a harsh and dreadful thing. A few electrifying days prove enough to transform the lives of these facsinating characters -- and the world -- forever." --
Publishers Weekly

"Carroll's somber and evocative look at some of the most frightening times in one of the most frightening places in the Cold War... Carroll, whose 2001 Constantine's Sword was a bestselling analysis of the Roman Catholic Church's dealings with the Reich, makes excellent use of his firsthand knowledge of the territory.... Fine period thriller." -- Kirkus Reviews

"Carroll, author of the best-selling memoir, An American Requiem, returns to fiction with a cold war coming-of-age tale that captures both the particular tensions of the era and the universal yearnings of the young... Carroll, telling the story in flashback through alternating narrators, ratchets the tension nicely while vividly evoking the cold war atmosphere and effectively contrasting the teens' naivete with the East Germans' realpolitik... Entertaining popular fiction." -- Booklist

"Suspense, history, literary fiction, espionage, romance and psychological drama -- Secret Father, the compelling new novel by acclaimed writer James Carroll, is all of this and more.... Gripping and beautifully written, Secret Father is a remarkable evocation of a tumultuous era and of the power that secrets can hold across generations." -- BookPage

"A gripping novel of Cold War paranoia, youthful rebellion and the confused love of parents and teenagers.... The Berlin setting, with its armed checkpoints and secret agents veiled in cigarette smoke, is vividly evoked and serves as a powerful metaphor for the emotional gulf that separates the narrators." -- Book Magazine
Questions for Discussion


1. Critics have praised James Carroll's ability to vividly capture the atmosphere of Cold War Berlin. How does he impart a sense of the tension of the times? What scenes or settings did you find particularly memorable?

2. How does this work compare to other spy novels you've read? How does Secret Father both fit and diverge from the standard definition of a spy novel?

3. In many complex and subtle ways, this is a novel of fathers and sons, about the legacy one generation leaves to the next, and about the gift and the burden of that legacy. How do Michael and Ulrich each cope with their legacies?

4. Carroll's narrators tell the story of May Day 1961 from a distance of nearly thirty years. Given this flashback structure, how does Carroll build and maintain suspense? How does he foreshadow events to come? Were you able to guess each character's fate? How does the novel's structure affect your anticipation of the scene at the book's end?

5. Secret Father reveals the drama of history as the sum of countless choices by fallible, fragile individuals. How do small actions set great events in motion in the novel?

6. When Michael takes up the story, he notes, "That surface enemies were subtle partners in maintaining what is necessary for peace is one of the great untold stories of the Cold War." In what ways does Secret Father tell this surprising story? How were both Paul and Michael able to observe this truth firsthand?

7. At first glance, Michael and Ulrich seem unlikely friends. What forms the basis of their friendship, and how does Carroll delve into the psychology of that friendship? How do their personalities complement each other? Whom would you consider the stronger person?

8. Much of the action of Secret Father is set in the early 1960s, but events of World War II pervade the novel. How do the lasting scars of that war stretch across the decades?

9. The epigraph of Secret Father is a line from Dostoyevsky: "Real love, compared to fantasy, is a harsh and dreadful thing." The line is restated in the novel, once by Charlotte and later echoed by Paul. Why does this line strike such a chord with these characters? How do the events of the book support this statement? Do you agree with Dostoyevsky?